


These Times We Climb

by Nerissa



Category: Avalon High (2010)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Girls with weapons, Loyalty, Magic, Past Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-08 12:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8845582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerissa/pseuds/Nerissa
Summary: This wasn't even the first time they'd come back. It was just the first time they'd come close to getting it right.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amathela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amathela/gifts).



It always ended on the beach.

There was no real reason Allie should fixate on that. It had been two days since the game, and all of them were moving around the school in an uneasy, increasingly clingy pack, reluctant to break apart now that they knew. But it kept coming back to the beach.

“Have you noticed,” Allie said, as they gathered around the lunch table on Monday, “one way or another, it always ends on that beach?”

Miles frowned.

“What do you mean, ‘always’?”

“Well, the last time, and the time before that . . . all of them, actually. We went to the beach every time, didn’t we?”

She registered the fact that the others were looking at her strangely.

“Wait, you really don’t remember?”

“Remember what?” Will was clearly trying to sound patient and encouraging, which only confused Allie more.

“You seriously don’t—the  _beach_.” She looked from one face to the other, searching for any sign of recognition. “Every time we get back together, we always end up on that beach. This is just the first time it went right.” She looked at each of them again, Lance and Marco blank, Jen so gently perplexed, Will genuinely stymied. Only Miles seemed to be waking to the reality of what she was saying.

“You mean, we’ve done this before? And you remember it?”

“ _Yes_!” she gestured gratefully at him. “Ever since the beach.”

“But how is that possible? I thought we agreed our whole coming-back thing was only possible during a lunar eclipse that coincided with a meteor shower.”

Allie shook her head impatiently. She had already considered that.

“We guessed that in like, three seconds. We don’t really _know_ what it means; only that the prophecy talks about a shadowed moon and falling stars. Lots of things can shadow the moon, though. Like clouds, or the Earth. Maybe it just means a meteor shower that happens during a new moon. How uncommon would _that_ be?”

“Well, a lot less so,” Miles said slowly. “If that’s the case, we could have come back literally hundreds—maybe even thousands of times. And if you’re saying you remember other lives . . .”

“I do! More every day. But the rest of you don’t? _None_ of you?”

It wasn’t a question she really  _needed_  to ask, since clearly none of them did, but she asked again anyway, for completion’s sake.

“You _really_ don’t remember?”

“Maybe,” said Jen, “you’d better tell us what you remember.”

Allie nodded, not quite looking at Jen, because she hadn’t been able to look directly at Jen ever since the beach and the influx of memories. They were all still bouncing around in her head, sounds and images and sensations of multiple lifetimes, and they were going to take a while to get sorted out. But she was pretty sure no matter how much time she had to sort it all, she was never going to be completely comfortable with some of what she now remembered.

Some of the things that had happened were never going to happen again, and that was fine. But it didn’t make remembering them any easier.

“Uh, so, the beach,” she said, still not looking directly at Jen, “when we were there with Mr. Moore—Mordred, the night of the game. As soon as we got there, that’s when I really saw everything. There were bits that came back to me before then, little pieces of memory—”

“My horse,” Will said suddenly. “I remember my horse.”

“Yeah,” Allie nodded vigorously, “stuff like that. Little pieces, like a dream coming back. Remember how hot it used to be on campaign? And we used to joke it wasn’t lordly to perspire in pursuit of chivalry, but we’d still sweat like pigs.”

“Doesn’t sound much different than now,” Lance grinned. Allie’s lives telescoped in the light of his smile, extending and collapsing in on each other, so that for one wild, world-tilting moment they were all their first selves again, mounted, setting a remarkably good pace for people and horses over-armoured and under-watered, joking about how awful everything was because really, when you were suffering in good company for a good cause, somehow it wasn’t that awful after all.

“Right,” she said, and tried not to mind how her voice squeaked. “So, those parts, I sort of remembered before the beach. But when we got there and I was myself again, it was like this punch in my head. _Inside_. That shook all the rest of it loose too. Guys,” she looked from one to the other, asking them, without actually asking them, to believe her, “we’ve definitely done this before.”

 

* * *

 

They would believe her, of course. In the end they would all believe her, even if they never actually remembered, because she was their king and she had their fealty. Even Marco, who hadn’t lived with them then, was already staring at her with a familiar fervour—but he was Bear clan after all, and they were bound to her service. The Order of the Bear was an old one, doggedly loyal, unshakeably fierce in its defence of her. The prophecies had almost been an afterthought, next to their self-appointment as her protectors while she lived.

The first devotee of the order had been a peasant man, the sort of person all the ballads called stalwart, stout and true. Which was true enough, but the ballads would never say how his blue eyes had twinkled when he took a knee before her, offering the use of his croft for as long as she and her knights had need of shelter in their quest to destroy a local haint who had been wreaking havoc all through the countryside.

“One night only,” she’d promised, “and you will be paid for your trouble.”

He’d been insulted by the offer; told her that service to the king was its own reward.

“You can’t eat service to the king,” Lancelot scoffed, dismounting with that kind of lazy, makes-it-look-easy flair that he would carry in every life. “Don’t be a fool, man. Let him pay you.”

The peasant had clearly wanted to challenge Lancelot over this casual dismissal of his honourable refusal, and just as clearly known he could not. Allie had stepped in, firm in gratitude.

“If you won’t take money, I’ll just have to find some other way.”

The opportunity to work out means of repayment had come sooner than she’d anticipated. As they all bedded down in the hay, the target of their quest, reluctant to wait for a proper challenge, had sought them out.

A green man, the half-wild offspring of a lesser wood god and the unfortunate maiden who had fallen under his thrall, caught wind of the noble knights come to be his undoing. He’d woke the wood in a brutal tangle of manic greenery and sent twisting bright shoots creeping through the barnyard, up the walls of the crofter’s dwelling and through the unbarred windows. Allie woke to a shout of warning, just in time to see Lancelot’s sword snick through the bramble that had been poised to wrap around her throat.

“Up you get, Sire!” he called cheerfully. “Look alive, Merlin.” He aimed a friendly kick at the wizard’s bedroll. “I think this is your sort of fight.”

It would have been exactly Merlin’s sort of fight, had his staff not hung securely from the rafters and the sudden lurch of an enterprising vine not pinned both the wizard’s arms to his side. Allie reached for her own sword, only to watch another vine spirit it away out the window, followed closely by Merlin’s staff.

“I’m not loving this,” she announced to nobody in particular. Lancelot tossed her a knife from the sheath at his ankle and she cut Merlin free. “Why did none of the stories mention it could wake the trees?”

“Come now your Majesty: who doesn’t love a really unpleasant plot twist that will probably get them killed?” Merlin muttered, kicking his way out of the chopped-up vines to huddle between his king and the first knight of the Round Table. “And where’s Gawain gone off to, anyway? Already hanging from the trees?”

“He was gone when I woke.” Lancelot spun to lop off the grasping tendril of a creeper that had crept too close for comfort. “Mayhap he is lost to us.”

“With one sword between us,” said Allie, “I think it’s safe to say we’ll be joining him soon.”

“What, my lord,” cried Lancelot, “so easily defeated? Have you been made victim of some enchantment? This is not the king I know.”

“Your king is _tired_ ,” Allie snapped. She might have said more, only a sudden _whoosh_ and burst of light and heat beyond the narrow window glutted with grasping vines silenced whatever thought she would have given voice to.

“What—” Merlin made a quick sally for the window, but Lancelot beat him to it.

“Oho, Gawain!” he called, jubilant. “And our good host as well, I see. Look, Sire. They’ve set the beast and its enchantments aflame.”

“Greenwood doesn’t burn so well, though,” Allie pointed out, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. “It’s smoking. I’m not sure they’ve really made an end of it. We’d better go down there.”

Down in the barnyard Allie fetched her sword from the charred vine that had stolen it and joined Lancelot in hacking at smoking, sparking, still-flexing tendrils. Merlin found his staff cast aside in a non-animated shrubbery, and started a working that smelled a lot like rotten eggs, which was highly suggestive of the staff’s frame of mind following its abduction.

The crofter and Gawain, having doused the green man in pitch and set him alight, continued the process with his limbs until there was not much left of the whole mess but smouldering chunks of new wood and five sweaty, soot-smudged men propping themselves up with their own weaponry.

“Is it out?” Allie croaked.

“It is finished,” promised the crofter. “And my lords have suffered no grievous injury?”

“None,” Lancelot assured him. “Thanks, it seems, to the offices of Sir Gawain and yourself.”

“Oh it was entirely him,” Gawain said earnestly, gesturing at the crofter. “I’d gone looking for some water when I heard him shout. He’d spotted the green man and already fetched the pitch by the time I reached them. It was all his doing.”

“Then we are indebted to you,” Allie decided. Winded and bone weary from too little sleep and too much hacking at flaming stranglevines, she nevertheless clasped the crofter’s hand in her own. “If there is some way we may show our gratitude, name it.”

Again the crofter looked offended, though he also looked like he was trying not to look offended, seeing as it was his king who had given offence.

“Your Majesty,” he said, with just the faintest hint of reproach, “my station may be humble, but I do have my honour. It is my privilege to serve my king. I ask for no reward.”

“That’s an enviably chivalrous thing to say,” Gawain observed. “Don’t you agree, Sire?”

“Perfectly,” Allie smiled. “Very well, friend crofter. Do us instead this honour: gather, if you can find them, any men of like valour and inclination. Men whose birth, but not honour, would exclude them from knighthood. And make of them, if you would, a corps who are dedicated to just this service. For a king has much need of true friends.”

She laid her hand on his shoulder as she said this, and for just a moment, the future came bearing down on all of them. The wood beyond the farm shimmered like sunlight on seawater, and the rich earth paled to golden sand. The stout crofter slimmed and straightened, and for just a moment he had Marco’s face.

Then the wood was their only reality again, and Allie doubted she could have seen what she imagined she had.

The crofter took a knee, swore himself into her service, and the Order of the Bear was born.

 

* * *

 

“That lines up with the stories,” Marco said quietly, when Allie had finished her recount. “They’ve been handed down to us for centuries. Not as colourful as your version, but the facts are all there. That’s pretty much how everybody says it happened.” He paused, considering. “Did you say you saw the beach _then_ , too? Before you even fought Mordred?”

“That’s how I remember it,” Allie nodded. “We weren’t _there_ -there, but it was like a glimpse, or something.”

“I remember that.” Will looked more surprised by his own discovery than anyone else on the bleachers. “How did I not . . . yeah. I _remember_ that. The green man and the fire, and all of us chopping it up. I remember the crofter too. And you! You were—” he looked at Allie with a mixture of renewed appreciation, awe, and confusion. “Wow.”

Allie nodded. “They’re all coming back now. Not just the fragments, like I got before. Whole stories, our lives together. But none of the rest of you remember it? Seriously?”

Her answer was visible in their faces before they even voiced it. Jen was downright apologetic as she shook her head.

“No, none.”

“Well you’re Guinevere, so you wouldn’t even have been there for it,” Miles said dismissively. It was only the truth, but somehow it came out as an unkindness. A wounded little frown puckered Jen’s forehead and Allie jumped in to smooth it over.

“We were all there for different events, obviously. Nobody was there for all of it. I’m mostly freaking out here because why am I the only one who remembers all of it? And now Will, too, unless—” she looked over to Miles. “Do you remember the rest?”

“Only Camelot,” he said quietly. “I remember Camelot. You’re saying there’s more?”

Allie nodded, miserable and determined all at once.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “So much more.”

“Then maybe . . .” Will looked around at the rest, seeking their understanding and agreement. “Maybe we’re not finished yet after all. Maybe there’s something still left for us to do, and once we’ve done that the rest of them will remember too.”

“It’s possible,” Marco said thoughtfully. “Some final curse or power that Mr. Moore—Mordred placed on us? I wouldn’t rule it out.”

“What else do you remember?” Lance asked. He was leaning in, intent on her answer, but his posture felt all wrong to Allie now that she could remember everything they had been through. Comparing their former camaraderie to his attitude now, Allie felt the loss of his friendship like a blow to the stomach.

“Uh,” she said, and squeezed her hands together, “well, the Revolution. We were trying to advocate for a peaceful resolution.”

“Between the British and the Americans?” Jen asked, but Allie shook her head.

“No.” She took a deep breath. “Not that one.”

 

* * *

 

“You’ve copied this part wrong.”

“Did I? Ugh. I’m sorry, Gen.” Allie took the sheet of paper back, and Genevieve, who was Guinevere, who would be Jen, laughed and pressed a kiss to the top of Allie’s head. The soft red hair at her temples, curled in a thousand lazy tendrils, spilled down into Allie’s face along with the light of Gen’s gentle smile.

“Your whole self is taken over with this, my friend. I think it’s natural you’d get mixed up from time to time. Only pray do not sign your own name! They would be on us in a twinkling, and I’ve no fancy for a ride in the tumbrel.”

“And you think I do?” Allie retorted, but her eyes were bright, and Gen smiled back just as fondly. Allie shrugged in grudging defeat and pushed the paper to the side of a desk already papered in drifts of half-finished drafts and treatises. The late-afternoon sun was about to desert them for evening, and Allie did not care to write by candlelight.

“All right then, I’ll give up for now. Maybe in the morning I’ll be able to think a little clearer.”

“Maybe you could if the riots would settle for a time,” Genevieve frowned. She crossed to the tall, narrow window in a swirl of peach-coloured skirt and lavender scent, and looked down on the street where the latest collection of Vendéen counter-revolutionaries were forming. “I think we hadn’t better go out tonight. There are too many in the streets.”

“I hardly think we risk being mistaken for Republicans though, do you?” Allie protested. “And I _must_ go. There’s a meeting in the church I want to cover. It will make good copy for this month’s issue. Everybody needs to know it isn’t just angry farmers with muskets. There are real concerns that deserve to be heard.”

Gen looked at her with a kind of fond apprehension, the sort you would reserve for a child prone to turning cartwheels in the street.

“And you really think that the National Convention will be swayed by what you write. You really think they will lay down arms against all of us? And what next? They have come too far, killed too many. They will keep killing, because they’ve forgotten what it feels like to do otherwise.”

Allie shrugged, mostly to cover the fact that she had no ready answer to the question of ‘what next’.

“I’ve got to try at least. If even one of them listens, I’ll have done that.” She searched Gen’s face in some confusion. “I thought you understood.”

“I did. I _do_. I’m just not sure it’s all worth _dying_ for, in the end.”

“Well then we won’t die,” Allie said, with a lightness she did not entirely feel. “Simple as that.”

“Oh!” Genevieve cried, “of course. The very plan. How did I not think of it?”

“Well,” Allie teased, “maybe you aren’t as clever as I.”

“That must be it,” Gen agreed solemnly, then spoiled the joke with her own laugh. “Oh come on, Allie. Stay in tonight. Promise? For me.”

So Allie promised.

So Allie went to bed on time.

So Allie woke to the sound of running footsteps, muffled sobs, and the urgent, low whisper of a man on Genevieve’s side of the room, which sent her lunging for the sabre she kept above her bed, even before a candle was lit across the room and she saw Gen huddled in the embrace of a large, defiant-looking man who seemed entirely too comfortable holding Gen for this to be his first time doing it.

Allie did not lower the sword, but neither did she raise her voice.

“Who the hell are you?” Then, as she registered that the sound of footsteps was still echoing all around them, filling the streets and surrounding the building, “and what the hell is _that_?”

“Those would be an offshoot of the rebel group who seeks to capture me as a spy, madame,” said the man still holding Gen. He spoke with exquisite courtesy, especially considering the announcement he’d just made.

“And you are . . . a spy?” Allie clarified. The point of the sword had not wavered from its address to his nose.

“I might be called such, in my daily affairs. But tonight I am only a man in love.”

Gen sobbed again: not, Allie discerned, from fear so much as complete guilt and mortification. The whole scope of the terrible truth settled on Allie then, and she groaned.

“Oh. _Genevieve_. Tell me you didn’t!”

“I’m so sorry Allie,” Gen whispered. “I had thought if you slept, maybe I could get out long enough to see him. Only he was being watched, and so they followed us both back here.”

“You led them right to us! You led them to the printing press! Now the papers, everything we’ve been trying to put together: they’ll destroy it all. How _could_ you?”

“Allie, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I—I’m so sorry. I had to see him.”

“You could have waited!” The enormity of everything they were about to lose broke over Allie in mounting waves of grief and betrayal. “This is everything, this is _ours_ , and you just threw it all away for _him_. How _could_ you?”

Gen just shook her head, shrinking from Allie’s panic. Allie dragged her hands through her hair, cast a despairing look around them at the pathetic little hope she’d begun to nurture, the press she had imagined would turn into a voice for the entire region, now about to be set to torch and burned to ash.

“We have to go,” she said hollowly. “They can’t find us here.”

It was the work of moments to add layers over nightclothes, dark cloaks that would make them more shadow than not, and disappear out the back window. Lance handed Gen over the sill and offered his hand to Allie as well. She scowled at him, all minute dark fury in the moonlight, and laid a hand on the hilt of her sabre. He rescinded his own hand without comment.

The blaze went up behind them before they even got three streets away, Gen supported by the man she’d risked everything to be with, Allie propped up by her own burning indignation at the loss.

For just the barest moment as they fled, the hard-packed dirt of the road blurred and softened to something more like sand. The roar of flame was dulled to the pounding of the surf, and the cloaks wrapped around them glimmered as if woven all through with threads of magic.

Then the dark reality swamped them once more, and they fled the town for the forest and freedom.

 

* * *

 

The more Allie remembered and relayed, the less real the cafeteria seemed. The fluorescent lights were some kind of stage lighting at this point; the laminate-topped table, little more than a set piece. It was as if the looming reality of _them_ and everything they had ever been eclipsed the thin veneer of reality that made up this particular single existence.

Allie might have felt entirely displaced, if Jen’s reaction to that story hadn’t so aggressively grounded her.

“Oh God.” Jen pressed her fingertips to her chin, eyes shimmering. “Oh, no. I remember it. I remember— _oh_.” She jerked around to stare at Allie as though seeing her for the first time and the last time all at once. “Allie . . .”

Allie shifted uncomfortably under Jen’s newly-recovered grief.

“It’s okay,” she said quietly. “I mean, it wasn’t. But it’s been ages now. I’ve had some time to get over it.”

“But all the work you’d put into the paper. And before that! Our marriage.” She shook her head instead, miserable. “Is that what I do? Every time? Do I really just ruin it, always?”

Lance’s arm wrapped around her shoulders straightaway, but Jen stayed stiff in his arms, as if softening to him would only compound her guilt. Lance glared over her head at Allie, but his displeasure barely registered. All her focus was on Jen.

“No,” she said softly. “No, you don’t ruin it. It’s just this thing we keep getting stuck in, this cycle. Mordred’s been using it to prevent me from doing what I was meant to do, and I’ve . . . well, I kinda think I’ve been letting him. On some level, anyway.”

But Jen still could not look at her, so Lance spoke up with the kind of loud haste that usually signals a forcible change of subject.

“Okay so Will remembers, and Jen does too, but the rest of us don’t. Why not?”

“It’s difficult to say,” Miles hedged. “I mean, there could be some remaining enchantment, or maybe part of the prophecy hasn’t been fulfilled.”

“But what part?” said Marco. “Allie knows who she is, and the rest of you do too, even if you can’t remember it. You’re all here again, and you’re ready to save the world.”

Allie cringed.

“Can we be a little less dramatic about that, maybe? I’m not even sure how my next track meet’s going to go. I think saving the world might be a little beyond me right now.”

“But it won’t be, someday,” Marco said, unswervingly certain of her glorious future. Allie’s face heated, and she fought the unkingly urge to cover her cheeks with both hands.

“Well, saving the world might be a ways off,” Will allowed, “but it sounds like there could be something that’s keeping us from helping you save it, if the rest of them can’t remember what we do.”

“He’s right.” Lance kept his arm around Jen, who was no longer sniffling, though she still looked stiff and upset. “Look, there has to be a reason we can’t all remember yet. Maybe all it will take is Allie just telling us the stories, but what if it’s more than that?”

“More how?” Allie wondered.

“Well, magic. A spell left over. We defeated Mr. Moore, didn’t we? We were on that beach with you, even if we can’t all remember our lives before it, or after. So why can’t we all remember our whole selves? It’s got to be magic.”

“You think he might have some enchantment left on us?” Miles wondered.

“Sure. Why not? I mean, if we can all get zapped to a beach in the past to fight an evil sorcerer, I don’t think it’s too crazy to say that maybe he left some kind of extra spell behind to keep us mixed up.”

“I guess it’s possible,” Miles said slowly. “Some kind of self-sustaining spell, with an external power supply. It’s sound in _theory_ but we’d have to find it to know for sure. And we definitely would have to find it before we could destroy it—if it even exists.”

“We could check his classroom,” suggested Will.

“No, it wouldn’t be there.” Jen, drawing strength and purpose from having a new problem to focus on, shook her head. “The police were all over his classroom; Emma was talking about it in homeroom, how they took away everything as evidence. I think right now they’re considering environmental factors. You know, radon and stuff? To make him think Allie was trying to attack him.”

“Radon gives you cancer,” Miles said dismissively. “Not delusions.”

“Well,” Jen shrugged, “it’s what Emma said anyway. I don’t think whatever we’re looking for will be in his classroom anymore, even if it used to be.”

“What about his house?” Marco said. “It would be safer than the classroom. No students or janitors, right?”

“That makes sense,” Allie said slowly, and saw a couple of the others nod as well. “It would be worth checking out.”

“Great,” said Lance, “and how exactly are we supposed to know where that is?”

“Well,” said Will, “I know where it is. After I wrote that paper in Civics for him last semester, about the basis of good government, he invited me and my mother over to his house.”

“Yeah cause _that’s_ not creepy,” Miles muttered.

“It’s not _that_ strange,” Will protested. “It was a really good paper! And besides, what I was going to say is, that’s when I found out he rents from my aunt.”

Allie went very still.

“Your aunt?”

“Yeah. My mother’s sister: Aunt Molly. He’s her upstairs tenant. I only found out at the dinner.”

“Your . . . _Will_.” Allie shook her head in disbelief. “Weren’t we _through_ this before?”

Everybody around the table looked in real horror at each other, then back to Will.

“Oh god,” he said hollowly, and sank back in his chair. “I didn’t even think.”

“Why?” Marco frowned, looking back and forth among them. “I’ve met Molly. She’s _nice._ You think there’s something wrong with her?”

“Gawain’s aunt,” Jen said gently, “has given us problems before.”

“No need to be diplomatic about it anymore, Jen,” Allie said crisply, shoving her chair back with grim finality. “You haven’t been queen in over a millennium. Might as well just say it: she fucking ruined us.”

The others pushed their chairs back as well, crossing the cafeteria rapidly in a tense group. Without any of them having to actually say so, they knew this was a problem they did not have the luxury of waiting to fix.

 

* * *

 

Getting to Mr. Moore’s house was simplicity itself.

Miles would later say that this should have been a warning sign, and the rest of them would agree, but at the time they were all just so pleased to have ready access to the property, thanks to Will. For as long as he could remember his aunt had rented out the upper level of her duplex, a Craftsman in moderately good repair, to a tenant. In this case, Mr. Moore.

The house was a good size, clapboard-sided and set back on a neatly-kept lawn, with white curtains fluttering in every window.

“It doesn’t look too sinister,” Allie ventured, voicing what they were all thinking. Miles dismissed her optimism with a breezy wave of his hand.

“Neither does a house made of candy.”

“I don’t know,” Marco considered, “I think the story’s kind of ruined those for most kids, don’t you?”

“Not the _point_ Marco!” Miles sighed. Will nodded, but put a tempering hand on Marco’s shoulder.

“Look, I get it. It _is_ hard to believe. I’ve known her all my life.”

“We knew her in another lifetime, too,” Allie reminded them. “And look what happened there.”

“She wasn’t _entirely_ responsible then, either.” Miles shot a quick, sideways look at Jen and Lance. “She did have something to work with.”

“It still wouldn’t have worked if we hadn’t been ready to allow it,” Allie said firmly. “This time, we _won’t_ allow it.” She looked around the circle at all of them, the heart of her old group. There were still so many of them missing, but the certainty had been building in her since the game that they would reunite eventually.

This time it would be different.

This time they’d get it right.

“We’re _here_ , don’t you see? More of us are together now than have been since the first time we were together. We’ve never truly reunited before now. I’m sure that’s why this time is going to be different.”

“But _how_ can you be sure?” Jen asked. “Sure we’re here, but we don’t even know what we’re looking for. We don’t even know it exists, whatever it is.”

“If it does exist,” said Marco, “I think you’ll know it when you see it. If there’s one thing the Order has gotten pretty good at over the years, it’s cataloguing Arthurian artifacts. They’re never really overt, but you do get this kind of _feel_ for it when you get close to one. Like déjà vu, almost.” He gave her the friendliest smile any of them had received from him since Mr. Moore’s arrest. “It’ll probably be even stronger for you guys than it is for us, given that you actually lived it.”

Jen nodded, but she still radiated uncertainty.

“Don’t worry,” Allie said gently, “you don’t have to go inside. Miles and I can do that, while you and Lance keep watch.”

“What about us?” Marco wondered, jerking his head toward Will.

“You’ll need to distract her so we can sneak in. It makes sense if it’s you two; your teacher was dragged away and arrested, you’ve just remembered he was her tenant, so you’re freaking out and hoping she’s okay. You go in and just pester her with concern long enough to let us get upstairs and search his things for the—power source, thingy.”

“That seems pretty plausible,” Lance said quietly. He settled a hand on Jen’s shoulder, checking her reaction. “What do you think?”

She nodded. “Well of course we have to do it. I mean, there isn’t really another option. I just wish there were.”

So Marco and Will stood on the wide front porch and knocked while the rest of them waited around the corner, pressed against the wall of the house. They heard the front door open and a glad cry of surprised welcome. Both boys were invited in, and the door closed behind them.

Allie’s doubt assailed her.

Could this be right? Was it too obvious that it would be Will’s aunt, again? It wasn’t as though the other connections had held. Mr. Moore certainly wasn’t her half brother this time around. Sure, he did remind her annoyingly of her parents in some ways, but that didn’t make them related. Maybe it was just too tidy, expecting that Will’s aunt would be Morgan all over again.

She was still wrestling with the likelihood of this as she and Miles slipped around the corner, climbed the steps and tested the front door handle. It was unlocked.

Gingerly, with an agony of caution, Allie eased open the door. She put out a foot . . . and stopped.

“What is it?” Miles hissed. “Go on, what are you waiting for?”

“I—I can’t.” Allie looked down at the threshold. “I can’t cross it. Something’s stopping me.”

“Here, let me try.” Miles nudged her aside, but he could not push past. Whatever barrier kept her from the house kept him out as well.

“It’s got to be Mr. Moore,” he said. He put out an experimental hand, and ended up slapping a solid wall of clear air. “Some spell, or—Lance! Hey, Lance, can you get in?”

Lance joined them at the hissed summons, and they discovered he could step inside without any problem. Jen, when summoned, joined them far more reluctantly and discovered she could also enter.

Allie looked at them both in genuine apology. Lance appeared grimly resigned to the logical course of action. Jen was something closer to distraught, but ultimately she was the one who pulled herself together first.

“Are you okay?” Allie wondered. Jen smiled faintly, and echoed her own words of a few minutes ago.

“I think I have to be okay with it, don’t I? It doesn’t look like there’s another way . . . though I really wish there were.”

Lance wrapped his hand around hers. Together they slipped into the entryway, and up the stairs to the apartment at the top of the house.

Allie and Miles hurried back around the house to wait.

 

* * *

 

“I have to tell you,” Aunt Molly confided, returning from the kitchen with two tall glasses fizzing pleasantly with soft drinks, “this is _such_ a surprise. I haven’t seen you boys in weeks!”

“It’s only been a few days, Aunt Molly,” Will protested, accepting one of the drinks while Marco took the other. “You came to my game on Friday, remember?”

“Well yes, but I’m sure there’s no excuse for not seeing you more often, since you live just one street over. In any event, how nice of you both to check up on me. I’m sure your mother sent you, of course, but you’re still such good boys to take an interest.”

“Alice didn’t send us,” Marco corrected her. “We just felt like stopping in.” Then he wished he could take the words back, when he saw how they seemed to smooth something over in her face.

“No?” she perched lightly on the edge of a straight-backed arm chair, smiling kindly. “Well, please come by any time you like. I _am_ so fond of you both.”

There was really no excuse for them actually drinking from the glasses they’d been given. Both of them felt pretty stupid about it afterward, but then Allie and Jen would both reassure them it was only natural. The living room was the same homey space of a dozen family Christmas visits, the smells were all good and familiar, and it was _Aunt Molly_. They’d accepted so many things from her in the past, on so many different occasions, that it hadn’t automatically occurred to them to be cautious this time.

So they drank.

Aunt Molly smiled a little brighter, and before very much longer, Will frowned. He licked his lips, then again, like something about his tongue didn’t feel quite right.

“Aunt Molly . . .” The room shifted in and out of focus. Aunt Molly smiled kindly.

“There now,” she said, “that’s all taken care of. Oh, I do wish it hadn’t come to this. You know, when he told me it wasn’t you who were Arthur, I was so relieved! Some little girl I’ve never met? That’s all right. Not knowing her will make it easier to do what needs doing. You’re such a nice boy, Will, and I’m really very fond of you, after a fashion. Isn’t it nice that it’s _not_ you? This way, we have options!”

This was said brightly, even as the room around them dimmed and swirled. Marco put both hands to his forehead, trying to fight back the fog, but Aunt Molly only clucked indulgently at his efforts.

“Oh dear, Marco. I’m afraid that’s of no use at all. Might as well just settle in and let it take hold.”

She was probably right. But something she’d said still fought its way through to him, and he had to ask.

“He told you? Mordred. How? He’s . . .”

“ _Was_ ,” she corrected. “He was released this morning, when his bail was posted. You’ve cost me _quite_ a lot of money you know! Of course he’s under strict orders not to have any contact with any of his students, or to approach the school, but you all seem to have got around that very neatly for us. Thank you so much for that. It was very considerate.”

She watched with calm, friendly interest as Will slid off the couch in a stupor, and Marco slumped in his chair.

“Best not to trouble yourself,” she said encouragingly. “Just let it take hold. Won’t be long now, and—oh!” she lifted her eyes to the ceiling as the floorboards creaked over their heads.

“Dear me. It seems we have rats. That will have to be attended to directly. But don’t worry, my dears. I have a very firm hand when it comes to pests.”

The last thing Marco saw before the darkness took over was the retreating back of his step-aunt as she left them both keeled over and started up the stairs.

Toward Lance and Jen.

 

* * *

 

“Can you see them?” Allie hissed. She was too short to see over the edge of the ground-level windowsill, so she fidgeted while Miles tried his best to balance on the edge of the foundation and peer inside.

“Nothing,” he scowled. “I can’t reach.”

“Then here.” She tugged on his shirt. “Get down here, and boost me up.”

He did as she instructed, hopping down to the ground and letting her scramble up onto his shoulders with an effort. She was tiny enough, but he still almost overbalanced in hoisting her to see through the glass.

“Anything?” he squeaked, his face smushed into the clapboards.

“Nuh uh. Can’t make out—wait. She’s—” Allie frantically curled herself into a bizarre C-shape, and Miles, correctly interpreting her need, tried to duck down without overbalancing altogether.

“What is it?”

“ _Shh_.”

Allie waited a moment longer before she cautiously poked her nose over the sill. “I think she’s gone upstairs.”

“What? No!” Miles lurched back from the wall in his panic, and nearly dropped King Arthur right on her royal backside. “Why didn’t Will and Marco stop her?”

“Maybe they can’t.” Allie craned her neck, staring up through the branches of an elderly apple tree, trying to catch a glimpse of either searcher. “But I think that’s Jen. JEN!”

She flailed her arms so emphatically in an effort to catch the attention of the blurry figure at the window, there was no hope for Miles. Overbalanced by the flailing arms, he toppled facefirst into the grass.

“Umph,” he huffed around a mouthful of dirt. “Did you _really_ need to—”

He broke off abruptly. There, on the ground in front of him, were a pair of shiny, pointy-toed loafers that did not belong to his king.

Miles and Allie peeled themselves off the ground and looked up into the backlit angry shadow of their recently-arrested, and evidently even more recently-released, English Literature teacher.

 

_There were boats. All along the shores, boats, and they were being forced into them, one at a time._

_Miles remembered working magic to keep as many families together as he could, but his staff was dragged from his grip by an English soldier with Mr. Moore’s face._

_He had been clouted into submission._

_Miles remembered Will, sweat-slicked, dirt-stained, wearing the rough clothes of an Acadian farmer. Will had run forward to challenge that same English soldier in his treatment of another family, only to be driven to the ground with the staff stolen from Miles._

 

Strangely, now, it was not the cold or the fear of the memory that most upset Miles. Rather it was remembering this in the context of Allie’s own memory that bothered him. He hated knowing the boat they were forced onto as Acadian exiles had been bound for France, and that if they had only made it there, if a storm had not come up and blown them off course to Louisiana, then their very deportation would not have been such a blow since they would in only a few short decades have been bound to reunite with the rest in the Vendée.

Was this, then, history? Nothing more than a series of should-have-dones and might-have-beens? Were they really all that vulnerable to a stray wind, a sinking ship, and a voyage never finished?

A broken staff?

Miles remembered, now.

 

_As the staff smashed down on Will’s skull, Miles saw it: a small amber stone that fell from the lower part of the staff, bounced once, then rolled down into the rocks until it was lost from view._

_Then the staff came crashing down again, and the memory was swept away in darkness._

 

Now the English soldier with Mordred’s face was standing in front of them again, weedy and sneering and entirely dangerous. Allie lurched up beside him, shoulders braced, hands empty, but no less ready for a fight.

Miles couldn’t let her, of course. That would never do. He struggled to rise.

“This,” said Mordred, “will yet proceed according to plan. I will admit to being caught _slightly_ off guard,” he turned a truly poisonous glare on Allie, who seemed unaffected by it, “but I think under the circumstances, it’s only understandable.”

“What,” said Miles, “you mean the circumstances where you tried to destroy a bunch of kids? Those circumstances?”

He paused in his ascent from the ground, doubling over coughing, clutching at his chest. Allie, distracted, turned to clutch at him in support.

“Miles? Are you okay? I didn’t squish you, did I?”

Mordred laughed, staring at them both in a kind of exultant disbelief.

“This!” he said. “This is my rival and his—I’m sorry, _her_ great protector. My god what a gift, the two of you in this state. Look at yourselves! Do you not feel it?” His hands clenched into great, angry fists. “The _degradation_ of your position. An asthmatic weakling, and, well.” He chuckled. “Arthur. I am sorry. It’s hardly a fair fight now, is it?”

“No,” Miles agreed, “it’s really not.” And with one hand he covered Allie’s eyes as she bent to help him, while with the other, he pulled the tiny staff from his shirt pocket.

The pen sparked blue and gold, and Miles cried a terrible word.

The blue got bluer, the gold blazed white, and through the blinding burring light of it all, he thought he saw both beaches all at once. Screaming children, parents weeping, a people driven from their home, and a king riding to reclaim a kingdom from the person who had nearly taken everything.

The two met and merged, dazzling in the brilliance of his spell.

Then the light dimmed again, and he and Allie stood alone. Mordred lay motionless on the ground.

 

* * *

 

“Can you see it? Anything?” Lance was rifling through upper shelves while Jen searched the lower drawers.

“Nothing. Look, there’s got to be a more logical way of going about this,” she muttered, closing yet another drawer and moving on to the next. “We could be all day. Have you ever seen so much junk in your life?”

“No, but then I’m not trying to hide some kind of magical artifact that keeps people from remembering their past lives, now, am I?” Lance tugged a shoebox down from an upper closet shelf and dug through it, scattering papers every whichway. “As a cover, it’s pretty effective. Who’d notice one more weird thing in an apartment full of them, right?”

“Right.” Jen straightened up from the freshly-searched bureau, and considered the room in a new light. “Maybe that’s the point.”

She drifted away from the bedroom, moving through the narrow hallway to consider each room she passed. Jen had the advantage over Lance, who still could not remember the entirety of their past selves. She remembered Mordred very well now, and something about that gave her a chilly confidence in her own ability to best him.

He had already stolen one lifetime of happiness from her. Damned if she’d let him steal a second.

“He was insecure,” she murmured, mostly to herself. _Bathroom, no_ . . . “He hated everything that Arthur was.” _Kitchen_ . . . well, maybe. But probably not.

“He would have been fixated on Will. Obsessed, even. And he never got to come back here after he found out that Allie was Arthur, so whatever he did with it, wherever he hid it, he would have done it with Will in mind.”

She came to a halt beside an open window set in the living room wall. Through the sheer curtains, down the street, the angle of view was such that she was just able to glimpse the roof of Will’s own house.

Jen smiled.

Dropping to her knees, she trailed her fingers over the windowsill. It was original to the house, stained a comfortable, satiny oak. There was something deeply, compellingly familiar about it. She didn’t want to take her hands away.

“Lance?” she called over her shoulder. “Lance, I think I might have found it.”

“So you have, my dear. And quite cleverly, too.”

Jen whipped around so fast she almost overbalanced. Somehow, Will’s Aunt Molly had made it all the way upstairs and into Mr. Moore’s apartment without making a sound.

“I—” Jen opened her mouth, but Aunt Molly made a firm, reproving little gesture, so that no sound escaped. Jen choked quietly on thick, stifling magic.

“Please don’t upset your friend in the next room. I’d like him to come out here, but we don’t need him in any kind of temper when he does. Now, why don’t you fetch it out while we wait? There’s no need to hide it anymore. Not now that you all know who you are.”

Moving as if in a dream, Jen put her hands back to the sill and pressed just how she knew she’d need to, in order to open it. The bottom part of the trim sprang neatly away. In a narrow alcove beyond, Jen found a cord hung with a single amber bead.

She took this in both hands and felt power slide lazily over her fingers.

“It’s meant to stop us remembering?” she verified. Aunt Molly nodded, looking very peaceful. Not at all dangerous.

Not at all alarming.

“It isn’t _that_ powerful, of course. Nothing like when it was part of Merlin’s staff. I’m afraid it was very _reluctant_ to cooperate at first; I think it’s been trying to reunite with the staff ever since it fell out, and that’s caused no end of difficulty. Hanging it on the cord helped, though.”

Jen’s fingers played over that same cord. The amber bead’s power sped up, racing along the lines of its prison, in answer to the queen’s touch.

Aunt Molly, apparently unaware, continued to talk.

“After it was threaded it calmed down a little, and I used it as needed. When I had to persuade my sister to leave England, for one. She was dreadfully stubborn over that. But it was important to move the baby; I could tell he was _something_ special. Of course my error was in believing that my nephew was Arthur, not Gawain again. I thought it best to get him entirely away from a land quite _that_ steeped in magic, so I used the bead and in the end I got Alice over here.”

Jen ran her fingers over the bead, answering the lightning-zip of imprisoned magic and testing the strength of the cord. Out of the corner of her eye she strained to see any sign of Allie or Miles through the window; any evidence that they had seen things were going not at all according to plan.

She saw none.

But behind her she heard Lance approach, and she knew their time was getting short.

“Ah!” Aunt Molly looked up, over her head. “Your friend is finished in poor Mr. Moore’s room, I see—no, no,” warningly, as Lance took a few running steps, and the stifling magic overtook Jen’s throat again with a vengeance. She grabbed at her neck with both hands, gasping. The power in the cord fluttered desperately.

“Please don’t,” Aunt Molly said firmly. “Very unwise of you, and so dangerous for her. I am able to reach her in my own way before you reach me in yours. You see?”

Lance saw. Jen did not look back as he approached, but her throat was freed and she could breathe again, so she knew he must have been properly cowed. The floor creaked under his new, more cautious pace.

In any moment he would be beside her, and Aunt Molly’s attention would no longer be divided between them. Jen wasn’t sure what good it would do, or if it even could do any good now, but she’d found the weak point in the cord she’d been searching for, and at the very least, she supposed it couldn’t hurt anything now.

She gripped the cord in each hand and pulled.

 

* * *

 

Chicago was no place to start when cleaning up corruption. Miles had tried to warn them when they settled on it.

“You don't start with Chicago,” he'd said, ever-reasonable. “You clean up the corruption in the little places first. You know. Nice, safe little towns with a sheriff on the take, or some small-time bootleg operation in the back of the town hall.”

“Sounds thrilling,” Allie had said, trailing a purposeful finger down the list of rooms to let. “Come on, Miles. I’m on a mission here.”

“Suicide mission! Allie, you start fixing places with names like Middlesburg and Sleepytown and . . . and other manageably corrupt locations. Then when you've got all your practice in, you can think about Chicago. Chicago is run by the mob. It’s no place to start.”

“It’s the _only_ place to start,” she’d fired back, eyes shining. “Lance agrees.”

“Oh, _well_ ,” Miles threw up his hands, “if _Lance_ is for it, then who am I to argue. Come on, Allie! You’ve got some kind of death wish, here.”

Like a bad prophecy, the words were rattling around in her head. Allie had definitely said something back to him after that, of course. _Death wish_ was just begging for a retort, and she’d given him one. Something clever, bracing and inspirational . . . she couldn't remember what, just now, what with a pair of hired goons standing in front of her and Lance, blocking their only route out of the alley, but she knew it had been wonderful.

"You starting to think we should have listened to Miles?" Lance wondered.

"Maybe a little." She bounced lightly on the balls of her feet, gauging how she'd have to swing if they came at her. "Maybe a lot."

"He'd love that."

"If we live, I'll let you tell him."

“Hey,” that was the one on the left, his broad shoulders straining at the seams of his storebought jacket, thick neck shining the blistery red of a recent shave. “Hey, don’t make this tough on yourselves. Just come along nice and quiet, okay?”

“Doesn’t know you too well, does he?” Lance muttered. Coming from anyone else it might have been a dig, but from her right-hand man it was pure validation.

Allie touched the handle of the switchblade in her pocket and smiled, bright and ready.

“He’s about to get to know me _real_ well.”

They didn’t clean up Chicago. There was too much of it, and not enough of them. But they made their mark where they could, and carried the promise forward until next time, when they could make it count. In that moment of bodies crunching, soft grunts and squeaks and the brutal exhale of a man’s final breath, the rancid alley had blurred with ancient rock and rolling surf. The sky overhead was by turns streetlight-stained and clear, pure blue, and as Allie drove her blade into the thick shiny neck, the blood that splashed out onto the pavement turned the sand red too.

Someday it would count in the long run. Until that day, they were all just stories, in the end.

Who better to understand that than King Arthur?

 

* * *

 

“Is he dead?” Miles squeaked. Allie wasn’t exactly in a rush to check, but she steeled herself and bent to touch Mr. Moore’s neck.

“No.” All the air rushed out of her in a whoosh. “He’s fine. Okay, come on, we’ve got to get up to Jen and Lance. Fast.”

So Miles gave her a boost and she shinned up the apple tree, scrabbling from one gnarled branch to the next, heading for the window where Jen had looked out.

As she drew closer Allie could hear a woman’s voice, eminently calm and reasonable, speaking just as conversationally as anybody would to some welcome guests. But there was nothing friendly about her words. With great effort Allie reached the final branch in time to see Aunt Molly move into view, bearing down on Lance and Jen.

“This is as close as you’ve ever come,” Aunt Molly said. She advanced on them with devastating steadiness, the pace of a woman who knew there was no rush, she had them right where she wanted them.

“I should congratulate you on that, Gwen. I’m sorry, it _is_ Gwen, isn’t it? Such a pretty face you always had. Of course that wouldn’t change. And here we have the fellow who stabbed his own king in the back. Fancy that. He still sends you to do such a valuable job?”

Her lip crinkled in pure derision.

“He always was a fool.”

Lance’s shoulders tightened perceptibly. It was a familiar gesture, though not one Allie had seen in that context yet in this life. But he had always bristled just that way in defence of his king, and suddenly hope was spiraling upward within her, giving her the strength and surety she needed to proceed along the branch.

“Come now,” Aunt Molly cajoled, “you’re only children yet. Is this how you want it to end? The handsome star player, his future full of glory. The pretty little cheerleader. What a future you could have together! I don’t need _all_ of you out of the way, you know. Arthur is enough.”

Allie’s hand slipped. The branch rocked and dipped. She clung, eyes screwed tight shut, and waited for it to settle.

“Why not,” Aunt Molly said softly, “just tell me where she is? Call her here. And the two of you can go on your way. You can live happily ever after, at last.”

Jen flushed, all delicate fury. Lance stood rooted beside her, a thing unmoved. When he spoke, the words reverberated through every century they’d ever known.

“It’s not going to work, Morgan. I’m the king’s man.”

Aunt Molly’s face curled into a filthy parody of her earlier smile, something dark and cruel and rich with the promise of lifetimes of pain.

“I remember a time when the king did not think so.” she sneered. “But keep your little fantasy, if it pleases you. You will need a happy story to take your mind off _this_.”

Her hand flashed out and magic spilled from her palm, something thick and coiled, ancient and angry. It snaked through the air, lightning-quick, and even for all that he’d been half-expecting it Lance still might not have managed to dodge in time if Jen, who had been rather more ready for such an attack, hadn’t thrown her entire weight against his near leg and knocked him out of the line of fire.

Amber light exploded around her and she screamed.

“ _Any damn time now, Allie_!”

Allie didn’t wait. She covered her head and dove through the window, right into Morgan LeFay.

Aunt Molly spun wildly at the blow and fell to the ground, unmarked, unmoving.

“Oh no,” Jen breathed, “she’s not _dead_ is she?” She was not nearly so squeamish as Miles, and moved forward to check, but Allie, halfway through struggling up off her opponent, gave a warning cry. Lance caught Jen’s arm and drew her back.

“Better not,” he said firmly. “Just in case. She’s no great fan of yours.”

Allie made it back to her feet in that moment, puffing and heaving, sheepish in the face of her belated arrival.

“Right,” she said, “probably not dead, first of all, because I didn’t hit her that hard, and also, thank you both. That was . . . um. Lance. I take it you remember now?”

“All of it,” Lance nodded. He gave her the kind of smile that people wrote songs about. “It was a lot to remember.”

“So much,” Allie groaned, and then, because it had been lifetimes since they last knew what they meant to each other, she folded against him in the sort of hug you save for family you haven’t seen in years.

“Hey,” he said gruffly.

“Hey,” she sighed.

He gripped her elbows a moment, forcefully, and she felt an echo of brotherhood that rolled down through the centuries.

“Took you long enough.” He held her at arm’s length to give a mock-serious scowl. “Don’t you know better than to leave the two of us alone for too long by now?”

“Oh!” Allie cried, and she walloped him across the arm. He laughed and slung the same arm around her neck.

For a moment she squirmed there, remembering lifetimes of this, the trust born and broken every time, but different now: something to build on and make better than it had ever been before.

And it had been pretty damn good, before.

She turned to fold Jen into the same embrace, and this time Jen stood straight and proud in her arms, already surer of her new role in the group.

“We, uh, should call somebody I think,” Miles volunteered, his voice drifting up feebly from the ground below. “Police or somebody. Because we have an unconscious guy out here, and there’s _her_ in there too, and I think I see Marco and Will in the room downstairs . . . yeah, they’re getting up. But they look kinda out of it, and this is starting to seem like a lot for us to clean up on our own.”

“Oh, right,” Allie nodded. Jen let her go to face the mess on the ground. Aunt Molly, twitching under the lingering magic of the bead from the staff, starting to come around, but not a threat.

Never again a threat.

“Yeah,” she said, “I’ll make the call.”

 

* * *

 

That night, with Mr. Moore again locked away, and his landlady locked away with him, Allie did not dream of the beach.

Instead she saw their future, spread out in its entirety, infinitely more glittering and golden than sand and sun-on-water.

She saw Will, his head thrown back, radiating easy charisma as he campaigned for the highest office in their new land. Marco stood less than an arm’s length away, offering silent support and protection.

Lance and Jen, dirt-grimed but smiling, working shoulder to shoulder in a country Allie had never seen before, building something strong and everlasting out of the rubble of a war.

Miles kept an eye on all of them, using his fully-restored staff in pen form to document their successes, map out strategies that would require reinforcement and protection in the future. Every now and then he would nudge a chesspiece across a board, sending a tiny spark of magic out at just the right moment to open a door, block off an enemy, smooth the path to whatever step was next needed.

And Allie, in her dream, sat the bar exam. There was a nervous calm in her that day, a readiness for whatever might lie ahead. The future was hers to face and she had the best people possible ready to face it with her.

Her own pen glided across the page, every stroke strong and sure, mightier in that moment than Excalibur itself.

With every line she wrote, she saw it rushing closer: the brand new world they were about to build.

Together.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide amathela! I hope this sparked a few smiles; I was all smiles over your prompts for this, and the excuse to rewatch this movie several times was pure bonus! I hope you enjoyed.


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